This has been a busy year for the Stranded Wind Initiative and I'm not sure I take the time to sum things up as often as I should. We've launched a hydroelectric powered ammonia plant, assisted in fundraising for a solid state ammonia synthesis method, filed a patent for a methanol synthesis method suitable for use with wind power, and our next effort will be the exploration and possible patenting of the century old Haber Bosch ammonia synthesis method, making it behave with the variable power typical of renewable sources.
If we execute on all of the things describes above we'll have cut the first little bit of brush on the path to freeing our agriculture from fossil fuels for both transportation and fertilization.
50% of all proteins humans consume have their root in synthetic ammonia. Ammonia, chemical formula NH3, is made today using natural gas (70%) or coal (30%), with inconsequential amounts being made using hydroelectric power in Egypt and Peru. The ammonia here is mostly made with gas while the Chinese use coal. Today 75% of our ammonia is imported and with the dollars weakness and concerns regarding the fate of natural gas supplies, both in terms of sale and the possible exhaustion of reservoirs, it seems wise to begin moving to something local and sustainable.
Our project in the Niagara Falls area is the first renewable ammonia in the United States, at least that we're aware of, and it'll be the first renewable plant in North America since the closing of the plant in Trail, British Columbia. The initial design is scaled to produce 50,000 tons a year or enough ammonia to heavily fertilizer 500,000 acres of corn. The total corn crop nationally is around ninety million acres. We need a megawatt continuously to make a thousand tons of ammonia a year, ninety million acres of corn needs nine million tons of ammonia, so we'd require the output of 9,000 of today's wind turbines in order to free the crop from fossil fuel inputs. The turbines would cost roughly forty billion dollars and the thirteen billion bushels of corn raised last year currently sell for about $3.00/bushel; ten percent of total production for ten years would pay for the energy production needed to make the crop's fertilizer.
The ammonia plants themselves aren't free; our numbers indicate about $2,000 in capital cost per each ton produced annually. Eighteen billion in plant costs would be needed in addition to the forty billion in wind turbines. This seems a small price to pay to secure such an important crop. Corn is 45% to 50% of the total national ammonia usage, with the rest going to wheat, soy, canola, many other crops, and industrial use.
Those numbers, both operating and capital cost, are associated with the older Haber Bosch style plant that we're using for the large scale hydroelectric setup. One Dr.Holbrook's solid state ammonia synthesis is done the same about of energy will produce about one and a half times the ammonia, the capital cost will be half that of the Haber Bosch method, and most important of all instead of the fifty or so million dollar minimum SSAS synthesis can start with a single tube and the amount of power needed for a big lightbulb. SSAS is also going to behave better with variable power inputs, which is vital for developing stranded renewable resource. Those looking here for the first time might not know what that means: a stranded renewable is one that exists in an area with not enough population to use it nor enough transmission lines to get the electricity to market.
The other thing we've found that makes sense with variable power inputs is an opportunistic methanol synthesis method. Capture the carbon dioxide from an ethanol plant, make hydrogen with an electrolyzer when the wind blows, and it's pretty easy to evolve methanol. Methanol is used to make biodiesel and can get six gallons of corn oil for every hundred gallons of ethanol – the corn is ground and boiled in hot ethanol to extract the oil prior to fermentation in a process known as fractionation. All of the liquid fuel energy needed for our agriculture can be made with wind driven ammonia production coupled with wind driven methanol synthesis, with these two techniques replacing the current natural gas based production methods.
The careful reader will be saying "Wait a minute!" You're right to do so – we mention a hydroelectric powered ammonia synthesis method, draw some conclusions about the amount of wind power needed to do the job, then state that both ammonia and methanol synthesis need just a bit of work to be ready to roll in that area. There is another patent we have in the works associated with making the older Haber Bosch synthesis method behave with variable power inputs. We're certain it'll work as it's a set of simple process control changes, but we're uncertain as to whether or not it's patentable. Portions of it exist in prior plant designs we've studied. This is the special sauce that will make Haber Bosch work with wind, solar, or variable hydropower. Don't think this means we don't need the SSAS process done to the point we can just buy off the shelf solid state ammonia synthesis reactors – give us those and we'll go further, faster in redrawing the landscape.
9,000 turbines mean 1,800 union wage high tech turbine maintainer jobs for rural areas. The ammonia plants are limited to a certain size based on available power and the service radius for the ammonia they deliver. Assume ninety large plants with thirty to forty employees each. Five to ten thousand people get good jobs and that doesn't seem much when viewed on the national scale, but if you count the wealth not shipped overseas to gas producers and mix that with the localization and stabilization of our agriculture it's a very good thing indeed.
The carbon dioxide emissions interdiction will be enormous. We're presuming a component of all of this will be the development of wind farms based on power transmission corridors associated with rail, and that the rail will be electrified as the wind turbines are deployed. We do this and we cut the farm to market CO2 as well as the field production CO2. We'll use the money we're not shipping overseas to build this along with urban trolley and other mass transit, while the rural areas not amenable to this will have local grown ethanol and wind driven methanol liquid fuel to cover their transportation needs.
We've come a long way in the last three hundred and twenty three days, eh? We have so much farther to go and can it really only be sixty three days until Obama takes office? We must have our ducks in a row by then.
We're going to need your help. We've limped through this last year and we're at a point where we can sell our way out of personal financial stress for those most closely involved in the Stranded Wind Initiative; Niagara Falls first, then Iowa, then British Columbia, then opening up into reaching out to over six hundred large scale hydroelectric production areas in the U.S. If even 1% of them have the local desire for ammonia synthesis and the associated greenhouse production we'll do just fine.
But we need to be more than fine, we need to drive things quickly. A thousand dollars would put money in the pocket of our web guru, who was laid off last Thursday. He is already bringing the long awaited Stranded Sun site along but distractions abound when you're going to lose your residence without something like a regular income.
We missed two Small Business Innovation Research grants earlier this year. $80,000 each, basically free money for both the solid state ammonia synthesis and the methanol synthesis systems. We have a crack grant writer and if we had ten times that thousand dollars we'd be able to fish out a grant or two at the federal and state level, setting both of those technologies rolling forward at a good clip.
The Stranded Wind Initiative has a bank account and an EIN number but has yet to complete the move to 501C3 status. Is there anyone here who can help get that done? We could really use (read: rearrange the world to make it a better place for our kids) about $15,000 in donations pretty much immediately. Have you ever fund raised for a 501C3? Got a direct connection with someone who might donate at that level? I'd love to hear from you if you do.
We're quite visible on DailyKos, we've got good command of Google's responses in regards to the things that interest us, but our strategic marketing guru, one of the many fantastic volunteers to arise from my writing here, tells me we need some star power behind our efforts to cut through the noise. I pick ... John Mellencamp, who has already done so much for the family farm, but I have no idea of how to reach him. Anyone else of his caliber who has displayed an interest in the family farm would be a potential benefit in that area.
So, those are my thoughts early on a Monday morning. We might just be busy enough here in a minute to pay the grant writer all on our own, but right now is not a time for maybes; we're at a critical juncture with the new administration coming into office and if we don't jump ahead of a mile long line of lobbyists for vested interests we'll see the impetus for change and the funds associated with it pissed away on incremental improvements in things that aren't sustainable in the first place. I welcome your recs, tips, and comments, but it would be even better to get just one email from someone who understands what we're doing and is willing and able to whip out a check book and make some of this stuff happen.